Movie review: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is a prince of a rock movie

Ed Symkus More Content Now

Monday

Oct 29, 2018 at 9:40 AMOct 29, 2018 at 9:40 AM

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is a really good rock ’n’ roll film. Not a great one. There hasn’t been a great one since John Carpenter directed the TV movie “Elvis” back in 1979. Still, this one blows away, for instance, Oliver Stone’s flat, overlong “The Doors,” and no one has yet attempted a comprehensive look at the Beatles or The Rolling Stones.

But “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which chronicles the ’70s and ’80s British rockers Queen, is getting middling early reviews, from music fans who don’t like Queen, film critics who are dismissing is as just another rock bio, and rock historians who say that the filmmakers left out too much and added unnecessary dramatic ingredients.

The most common criticism so far is that the film is “too formulaic.”

I say balderdash! It’s a biography. Of course it’s formulaic. You have the band’s early days of going for the gold, the years when their records topped the sales charts, and some of the to-be-expected trying times. The script also focuses on the four distinct personalities of the band members: Flamboyant singer Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek, in a knockout performance), long-fingered guitarist Brian May (Gwylim Lee), steady-as-a-rock drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), and appearance-shifting bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzarello, who you likely won’t recognize as little Tim in “Jurassic Park”).

There are some minor problems, most notably the inclusion of Mercury’s London-based Pakistani family, which has little to do with the story at hand. That story begins and ends with Freddie Mercury. We find out that he wasn’t bothered by his oversized front teeth, that he was writing songs from a young age, that he had the over-inflated ego needed to succeed as a frontman, that he thought he was bisexual, even though his wife Mary (Lucy Boynton) believed he was gay, and that he was a major talent with a powerhouse of a beautiful voice.

Yes, we learn a lot about Freddie Mercury, but next to nothing about the meanings behind the gloriously complex title song — you know, the one that mentions Scaramouch, Galileo, and Beelzebub. The script does suggest that it was written and recorded during the band’s residency at a secluded farmhouse, then shows the finished song being summarily rejected by the EMI Records honcho who signed Queen to the label. Note: The character, Ray Foster, who is loosely based on an actual EMI exec, is winningly played by an overly made-up Mike Myers.

Bookended by scenes of the 1985 Live Aid concert, “Bohemian Rhapsody” traces how Mercury initially talked (sang) his way into the band in 1970, what it took for them to move from selling out pubs all over England to settling in to a recording studio, then finding management and soon after, getting their first tour of America.

Directed by Bryan Singer, who made his name in the superhero business (four X-Men films and “Superman Returns”), the film places Mercury just short of being a kind of rock superhero, but isn’t shy about pointing out what some would call his flaws: His apparent confusion about his sexual preferences (though these scenes are mild enough to keep a PG-13 rating), the fact that unscrupulous people are able to pull the wool over his eyes, his carelessness about being on time for rehearsals.

But it’s also a celebration of Mercury and the band and their music. A nicely done motif involves peeking in during the creation new songs, then segueing to finished stage performances of them. These segments are best represented by “We Will Rock You” and “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Melodrama eventually sets in with Mercury’s workaholic attitude and extramarital affairs getting in the way of his marriage, with constantly rising tensions in the band, with treachery from the management camp, and with Mercury’s health — this took place in the early days of the AIDs epidemic — spiraling downward.

The icing on the film’s cake is the exciting re-creation of Queen’s set at Live Aid, for which Singer and the actors portraying Queen repeatedly watched the actual footage and memorized every move. So, knowing all of that, does the film take too many liberties? Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? It doesn’t really matter to me.

— Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.

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